Random Note Color

Off the Wall
1

Is there a way to have the color of a note select a color at random, or better, a color at random from an array of preselected colors? Just curious. :thinking:

2

Sure.

Make a list of colors you want

. $MyList=“red; green;blue;poppy;black;white”

The nth color on this list is $MyList.at(n), where n={0,1,2…5}.

The expression

rand()

generates a random number from 0 to 1. So

$MyNumber=rand(); $MyNumber=floor(6*$MyNumber)

will give us the random number we want. (There’s an issue with complex expressions containing rand(), which will be fixed shortly; doing this in two steps is a workaround.

3

Should this be floor(6*$MyList)?

4

No. Normally, I’d write

$MyNumber=floor( 6*rand() )

But there’s an issue in 8.2.1: rand() is confused about what sort of thing it returns, and multiplication needs to know what sort of thing is multiplying. So, we do it in two steps:

$MyNumber=rand();
$MyNumber=floor(6*$MyNumber);

5

Thanks for the clarification. I was confused about where the code references $MyList, but now I’m guessing that $MyNumber and $MyList already know about each other under the hood.

6

I think the pieces go together like so:

$MyList="red;green;blue;poppy;black;white";
$MyNumber=rand();
$MyNumber=floor(6*$MyNumber);
$Color=$MyList.at($MyNumber);
3 Likes
7

Indeed they do! Thanks, @mwra!